One mother is speaking out about her personal experience amid a national baby formula shortage.
What are the details?
Wynter Balthrop, a Tennessee mother, told Fox News that she fears for her 8-month-old daughter, Blakeley, amid formula shortages.
Balthrop’s young daughter — who consumes specially formulated Enfamil, a hypoallergenic baby formula that is the only one of its kind that the child can tolerate — is months away from being able to drink standard dairy or nut milks, and her mother is struggling to find the formula that her daughter needs.
“We went to six different stores and searched and called multiple others as far as three hours away from us,” she told Fox News Digital for a weekend interview on the shortages. “[W]e were not able to find one can or bottle of her formula.”
Instead, Balthrop said, she was forced to give her daughter a generic version — which reportedly made the child sick.
“I broke down in the car,” she said. “[I was] panicking and sad for my girl because we had enough formula left to make one bottle — and I knew we would have to use the generic formula that hurt her stomach again. And that broke my heart.”
Balthrop said that she had her family are working hard to toe the line between stockpiling formula and leaving some for other struggling families like her own.
“We are now grabbing every can or ready-to-feed bottle we see,” Balthrop explained, “while also trying not to be greedy and leave some for others. … I’ve seen the fear in their eyes [over] the empty shelves at stores.”
She added, “It’s sad that in today’s world, this is an issue we are having. My heart breaks for all the mamas out there suffering and panicked from this shortage.”
What else is there to know about this?
The baby formula shortages have impacted consumers across the country, but have been concentrated across six states including Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas.
“We expect to continue to see the baby formula category being dramatically affected by these conditions,” he added. “Baby formula stock … has been one of the more affected categories so far in 2022, and one that will continue to demonstrate higher than average out-of-stock levels.”